Changing Planet

It’s entirely possible, even likely, that we humans will not coexist very much longer with ancient, thick-skinned megafauna weighing thousands of pounds. How to save them is a matter of ever greater urgency—and dispute.

For African elephants—whose numbers may not exceed 400,000 and are falling yearly by some 30,000 to satisfy human lust for ornamental and religious ivory—there are stirrings of hope. National ivory stockpiles are being destroyed around the world to prevent leakage onto the black market (Ethiopia’s, yesterday), African nations are designing ivory action plans and their vaults of ivory await imminent inventory, state-level ivory bans are being enacted around the U.S., and on February 26 China suspended imports of ivory carvings for one year.

But for the other venerable giant of the Mother Continent—the rhino—the picture is dark. Africa-wide, an estimated 25,000 rhinos, black and white, are still standing. Their horn is in high demand in the East, mainly in Vietnam as a purported cure for cancer, fevers and hangovers. Last year, more than 1,200 rhinos were poached in South Africa alone.

Rhinos in Kruger National Park. Photograph by James P. Blair/National Geographic Creative.

With two of the planet’s iconic pachyderms under unprecedented threat, you might think that emergency measures for both species would be complementary. Yet emerging conservation strategies for elephants are protectionist, while for rhinos the trend is extractivist—a regional strategy toward farming rhinos and establishing a legal, regulated trade in their horns.

Regional-level strategies have already been tried, in Southern Africa—and they’ve been catastrophic for elephants across the rest of the continent.

In 2008, because South Africa’s elephant herds were growing, the country—along with Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe—was permitted under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to sell its stockpiled ivory, accumulated from natural deaths and managed culls, to “accredited traders” in China and Japan.

It’s now generally agreed that the sales were poorly designed and executed, and that at a time when a global ivory trade ban is in place, one-off sales are a bad idea. Moreover, South Africa has since been suspected of misappropriation of funds raised from its sale.

While these sales were allowed on the basis of good protection, rhinos are emphatically not the beneficiaries of good protection. They’re being killed in appalling numbers under the noses of South Africa’s self-celebrated good management. But South Africa seems intent on swaying decisions about pachyderms yet again—and doing so under a much more desperate set of circumstances.

South Africa’s Move Toward a Legal Rhino Horn Trade

It will be up to CITES whether South Africa gets to indulge in a legal trade in stockpiled horns and horns cropped from live (anesthetized) rhinos.

What case do South Africa’s trade proponents make? They will say:

South Africa holds the largest number of rhinos (18,933 of 20,425 southern white rhinos and 1,792 of 2,323 of south-central black rhinos).

Rhinos can be and are being farmed.

Horns can be harvested from live rhinos, unlike tusks from elephants.

The trade ban is not working.

We have yet to test this experiment on rhinos.

Pro-traders also readily cite vicuñas (South American camelids) and crocodiles as examples of successful “sustainable use.” Apart from differences in biology, they don’t say that vicuñas recovered in the wild before being traded and that poaching of wild vicuñas is increasing yet again despite a legal trade. Nor do they mention that it took two to three decades to switch from wild-sourced to farmed crocodile skins.

I view farms (of bears, tigers, vicuña, rhinos) as “living stockpiles” that provide little incentive for protection of species in the wild and often benefit local communities less than they do upscale traders at the end of the supply chain.

Legalizing trade in South Africa will not help protect wild rhinos in the other 11 African countries that hold very few rhinos. Experience with one-off ivory sales and trade in vicuña wool suggests that legalizing trade expands markets, increases demand, and complicates enforcement in other regions. The cascading effects impede protection of scarce or at risk populations, species, or subspecies.

Two forward-thinking economists—Alejandro Nadal and Francisco Aguayo—contend that views about trade in wildlife are flawed for many reasons. One is that markets are multi-product/multi-species. To view a market (for, say, rhino horn) in isolation is an “extremely simplistic view.”

In the real world, they say, “supply and demand depend on a constellation of relative prices of substitute and complementary goods…creating a complex web of inter-dependent relations among the goods consumed.”

Or to put it more simply, consumers decide among a range of relatively priced products and options. For a trafficker or trader, the best strategy is to differentiate and diversify.

Nadal and Aguayo point out that seizures of illegal contraband prove that people involved in illegal logging and drug or firearms smuggling often also traffic in animal and plant species—not in single products.

And poachers do too.

Poachers may specialize initially on the most profitable and preferred species, but in the 1970s and 80s, the same poachers simultaneously harvested rhinos and elephants.

There are still (some few) places where elephants and rhinos coexist. One is Kruger National Park, the epicenter of rhino poaching. It’s estimated that Kruger has between 9,000 and 12,000 white rhinos. At what point, if rhino numbers continue to fall, would poachers turn to Kruger’s estimated 14,000 remaining elephants?

Farmed, legal horn would introduce still another dimension.

“Increasing competition—by providing farmed product—may actually encourage increased offtake from the wild as the ability of illegal traders to keep prices up is reduced,” says Adam Dutton, an economist with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Dutton has found that Chinese consumers of bear bile actually prefer a wild to farmed source. Likewise, parts from wild, not farmed, tigers are preferred.

Given the decline in wild rhinos, and if trade in their horn opens up (sourced from farmed or ranched rhinos), what will poachers do?

Competition with a legal market may mean that they poach more wild rhinos (especially if consumers express a preference for wild-sourced horn). When rhinos become too hard to find, they may target elephants (and other species) in southern African countries.

Corruption, Liz Bennett, of the Wildlife Conservation Society, wrote last year, would obstruct a legal ivory trade envisioned to curb poaching and black and gray markets.

Similarly, “A ‘legal trade’ in rhino horn may be an oxymoron,” wrote Richard Ellis in 2005. “It’s a conservation measure that would only work…with a clear chain of custody and full control at all points, from source to final sale.”

Ellis points to the Asian wildlife trade, which is “rife with corruption at every level” as demonstrating that “no amount of government intervention can circumvent the black market.”

Disadvantaged communities are as unlikely to benefit from rhino horn trade as from one-off ivory sales and wildlife watching tourism.

A recent study estimated that revenue of US$600 billion a year is generated from tourism in protected areas (PAs) around the world, with a mere 1.7 percent of it spent on conserving those areas. Clearly there’s potential for increased investment in local communities who live adjacent to PAs and the biodiversity within.

Visitors to African countries that hold the ever-thinning ranks of the planet’s great creatures still want to see rhinos—with their horns intact—in the wild. They still want to see elephants—with their family groups intact.

Let us spare rhinos the experiment that has been tried with elephants, tigers, bears, and vicuña. Let us come up with a better way.

Dr. Katarzyna Nowak is a research fellow in anthropology at Durham University (UK) and a research associate in zoology at the University of the Free State Qwaqwa (RSA). She works on primates and elephants in Tanzania and South Africa. Follow her on twitter @katzyna.

Meet the Author

Katarzyna Nowak is a conservation scientist affiliated with the Zoology Department at the University of the Free State, Qwaqwa, South Africa. She has spent fifteen years researching and writing about the behavior and conservation of wild monkeys and elephants, and human-wildlife interactions. She helped establish and advises the Southern Tanzania Elephant Program. She's currently based in Colorado's Front Range. Photo credit: Trevor Jones

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Ronald Orenstein

Dr. Nowak has it exactly right, and I say that on the basis of over twenty-five years of dealing with this and other wildlife trade issues at CITES and elsewhere. Legal rhino trade is a pipe dream, and those who think they can sell it at the 2016 CITES meeting had better count on more than the fact that the meeting will take place in South Africa. I hope that the South African government will think long and hard before bringing a trade proposal forward, and had also better be prepared (based on the ivory experience) to wait years (as rhinos continue to be slaughtered) for trade to be permitted even in the unlikely event that CITES gives it conditional approval. The one additional point I can add is that China already has established rhino facilities using live animals exported from South Africa, and that China will certainly prefer to produce its own supply of horn in future than to depend on South Africa. It is noteworthy that not one country, including China and Vietnam, has come forward supporting legal trade, offered to be a buyer, or suggested that it would be willing to alter its domestc law to permit legal trade to occur. South Africa may well end up as a prospective marketer with no customers – at least, with no legal customers.

Dustin Munro

There are sustainable ways to use elephants,rhinos,and other large mammals to make money without killing them and/or destroying their habitat.GOOGLE this title for a solution being used for the Asian Elephant and indian Rhino-How to save rhinos? By turning their dung into paper.

A possible solution I figured out is:

The Real Large Mammal Medicine And Food-Cash Cows

It is not elephant tusks or rhino horn that have medicinal properties or miracle cures.However,there may actually be a real medicine as well as food source from rhinos and elephants and many other large herbivorous mammals in Africa like hippos,eland,cape buffalo,manatees and dugons-without killing them or destroying their habitat!

It is their milk! One example was shown in “Durrell In Russia”about people in Russia raising eland for the milk and saying it was good for fighting diseases(I think the examples of diseases were yellow fever and tuberculoses).Therefore the milk from all mammals that are large enough to produce large amounts of milk should be milked for investigation of medicinal qualities like possible malaria immunity and help fight other tropical diseases that the animals in those areas are exposed to and are deadly to people.Of course the milk would probably be great for food products too and help make those animals benefit from high demand.

Large herbivorous mammals in Asia could also benefit from high demand too by milking them for use for food products and medicinal properties.Some examples of food products mada from and/or using milk are cheese,chocolate,cream,ice cream,mayonaise,butter et.The animals could be captured as mother and it’s young,milk the mother,then release them after milking.That should only be done with mothers that have young that are already eating solid food to avoid the young from not getting enough milk.That would not only make the animals “Cash Cows”without killing them,but also greatly encourage people to breed whatever animals they would be milking for the probable high price of wildlife milk to replace the high price of rhino horn and elephant tusk.Of course the milk used for food products should be tested for toxic plant residue since some animals may eat plants that are toxic to people.

Richard Estes

Dr. Nowak is a dedicated and highly articulate champion of wildlife conservation, who has carried out research on African elephants, primates, ungulates and the areas set aside for their protection.

Dustin Munro

There are sustainable ways to use elephants,rhinos,and other large mammals to make money without killing them and/or destroying their habitat.GOOGLE this title for a solution being used for the Asian Elephant and indian Rhino-How to save rhinos? By turning their dung into paper.

A possible solution I figured out is:

The Real Large Mammal Medicine And Food-Cash Cows

It is not elephant tusks or rhino horn that have medicinal properties or miracle cures.However,there may actually be a real medicine as well as food source from rhinos and elephants and many other large herbivorous mammals in Africa like hippos,eland,cape buffalo,manatees and dugons-without killing them or destroying their habitat!

It is their milk! One example was shown in “Durrell In Russia”about people in Russia raising eland for the milk and saying it was good for fighting diseases(I think the examples of diseases were yellow fever and tuberculoses).Therefore the milk from all mammals that are large enough to produce large amounts of milk should be milked for investigation of medicinal qualities like possible malaria immunity and help fight other tropical diseases that the animals in those areas are exposed to and are deadly to people.Of course the milk would probably be great for food products too and help make those animals benefit from high demand.

Large herbivorous mammals in Asia could also benefit from high demand too by milking them for use for food products and medicinal properties.Some examples of food products made from and/or using milk are cheese,chocolate,cream,ice cream,mayonaise,butter et.The animals could be captured as mother and it’s young,milk the mother,then release them after milking.That should only be done with mothers that have young that are already eating solid food to avoid the young from not getting enough milk.That would not only make the animals “Cash Cows”without killing them,but also greatly encourage people to breed whatever animals they would be milking for the probable high price of wildlife milk to replace the high price of rhino horn and elephant tusk.Of course the milk used for food products should be tested for toxic plant residue since some animals may eat plants that are toxic to people.

Joan Wilken

As far as the rhino horn situation in South Africa, I agree that it should not be legalised, but I am concerned that the government is so corrupt and there interest lies solely in lining their pockets, to the detriment of all else. The same goes for all socalled “farmers” of rhinos as its only financial gains and not conservation that inspires them! All legalising should be heavilly opposed and fought

Julie Crain

Great article!

Aliy Abdurahim Aliy

We all have to conserve the endangered species but at the end of the day it is few people entrusted to lead us on the conservation and it is where then the saga floats. Politicians take a lead while the scientists are ordered to follow developmental ethics in the protection of such species – when will scientists have control over the nature without political interference!

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Researchers, conservationists, and others share stories, insights and ideas about Our Changing Planet, Wildlife & Wild Spaces, and The Human Journey. More than 50,000 comments have been added to 10,000 posts. Explore the list alongside to dive deeper into some of the most popular categories of the National Geographic Society’s conversation platform Voices.

Opinions are those of the blogger and/or the blogger’s organization, and not necessarily those of the National Geographic Society. Posters of blogs and comments are required to observe National Geographic’s community rules and other terms of service.

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About the Blog

Researchers, conservationists, and others share stories, insights and ideas about Our Changing Planet, Wildlife & Wild Spaces, and The Human Journey. More than 50,000 comments have been added to 10,000 posts. Explore the list alongside to dive deeper into some of the most popular categories of the National Geographic Society’s conversation platform Voices.

Opinions are those of the blogger and/or the blogger’s organization, and not necessarily those of the National Geographic Society. Posters of blogs and comments are required to observe National Geographic’s community rules and other terms of service.